Friday, December 27, 2013

Spying on birds- who the hell do we think we are?

I can't be the only person who watched this commercial and just kept thinking over and over again "this is just so very wrong...."

For the convenience of douchenozzle humans, now we can trick birds into living their entire freaking lives for our entertainment? And is this in any way good for the birds- don't they kind of need darkness on a regular schedule? I don't own fish, but I know from talking to the very strange people who seem to like them that aquariums are supposed to include objects that allow the little things to hide from the prying eyes of their captors from time to time. I've been told this is true of other animals, too- zookeepers don't force animals to spend every hour the place is open on display, and provide caves, holes etc. for the poor things to take a break from the gawking gaze of idiot The World Was Fashioned For Us homo sapiens.

Maybe birds are different but, geeesh....

It's bad enough that we often play Mad Scientist with nature, breeding dogs with hip problems because we like them to look Just So and after all, they exist for our pleasure and only our pleasure anyway, right? But it's worse when we expect wild animals to eat, breathe, mate and die under the magnifying glass of our overbearing cluelessness and monstrous sense of entitlement. To paraphrase Frank Zappa, "I'm not a bird, but there sure are times when I wish I could say I wasn't a human."

1 comment:

There's only one way I would ever get one of these, and that was if I wanted to torture my cats by enabling them to watch a 24-7 bird version of "Big Brother." Talk about subjecting them to the epitome of torment and frustration because they were just "this side of paradise"! I'd have to be exceptionally cruel to THEM to do that--allow them a constant close-up view of birds (especially tender, helpless little baby birds) that they could see but never reach.

"Aw, please, Mom, can't we--?"

"NO."

It would be just plain mean. Not to mention which, the birds would probably live their lives in a state of perpetual freakout, being watched constantly by two cats.